English

A probabilistic way to discover the rainbow

History and Overview 2021-12-08 v2 Combinatorics Probability

Abstract

"No two rainbows are the same. Neither are two packs of Skittles. Enjoy an odd mix!". Using an interpretation via spatial random walks, we quantify the probability that two randomly selected packs of Skittles candy are identical and determine the expected number of packs one has to purchase until the first match. We believe this problem to be appealing for middle and high school students as well as undergraduate students at University.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.01030,
  title  = {A probabilistic way to discover the rainbow},
  author = {Joscha Prochno and Michael Schmitz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.01030},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

13 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:51:02.570Z